The Desktop Kabini Review Part 1: AMD Athlon 5350 (AM1) Tested
by Ian Cutress on April 9, 2014 8:00 AM ESTAMD announced earlier in March that it would be launching a socketed desktop Kabini APU. Traditionally the ultra low end/low power SoCs on desktops have come in packages soldered on to motherboards. If you need a faster CPU, you bought a new motherboard with it. With its new AM1 platform, AMD hopes to bring the sort of flexibility enjoyed by the rest of the desktop market to the entry level value segment.
The rationale is simple: the traditional desktop PC is under tremendous price pressure due to the popularity of affordable tablets, notebooks, Chromebooks and Chromeboxes. While there are definitely advantages to a desktop, it's a market that won't grow on its own. The one advantage desktops have over any of the aforementioned modern mainstream computing devices is upgradability. Unfortunately that's a feature that's often lost as we look at the value segment of the desktop market. AM1 attempts to fix that.
A socketed APU is useless without a lineup of APUs to swap in and out of the aforementioned socket, and that's exactly what AMD is launching today. There are a total of four AM1 APUs launching today:
AMD AM1 Kabini APUs | ||||
Athlon 5350 |
Athlon 5150 |
Sempron 3850 |
Sempron 2650 |
|
CPU Cores | 4 | 4 | 4 | 2 |
CPU Frequency | 2.05 GHz | 1.60 GHz | 1.30 GHz | 1.45 GHz |
GPU Cores | 128 | 128 | 128 | 128 |
GPU Frequency | 600 MHz | 600 MHz | 450 MHz | 400 MHz |
Memory Frequency | 1600 MHz | 1600 MHz | 1600 MHz | 1333 MHz |
L2 Cache | 2 MB | 2 MB | 2 MB | 1 MB |
TDP | 25 W | 25 W | 25 W | 25 W |
Price | $55 | $45 | $36 | $31 |
Each of these APUs features up to four 28nm Jaguar cores and a 128 SP implementation of AMD's GCN GPU. We've gone over both the Jaguar and GCN architectures in previous articles, so we won't spend a lot of time recapping them here. Jaguar is the latest in AMD's line of "cat" cores, designed to go up against Intel's Atom. GCN on the other hand is a well known GPU design from AMD as well, cut down here to fit in a much smaller die area (and thermal envelope).
This isn't the first time we've seen this Jaguar + GCN combination of course. Kabini first launched as a notebook APU nearly a year ago. Architecturally we're looking at the very same SoC, even down to running at the same max clocks and at the same TDP. The big difference is what we have here today is socketed and targeted at the desktop.
The Athlon and Sempron brands are back and used for AM1 Kabini. The most expensive AM1 APU is the $55 Athlon 5350, a quad core SoC running at 2.05 GHz with a 2 compute unit GCN GPU (128 SP) running at 600 MHz. All four models will have an official TDP rating of 25W, suggesting that they are all the same die and merely binned according to performance.
While the APU costs are low, it's actually the motherboard costs that are most impressive. AMD expects mini-ITX and micro-ATX AM1 motherboards to retail for between $25 - $35. At the low end of the spectrum that means you could be looking at a fully integrated desktop platform for less than $60. Obviously you have to add in the cost of memory, storage, PSU/chassis and heatsink/fan but we're still dealing with an extremely low cost solution.
The real value in having a socketed processor is being able to upgrade the chip without incurring the cost of a new motherboard down the road. Unfortunately AMD isn't saying anything about what future APUs will support Socket-FS1b, so for now all we have is what's in the table above. Given the BGA compatibility between Kabini and Beema, I'd assume we might see a Beema FS1b upgrade at some point. However what comes after that remains to be seen.
Historically AMD has done a good job of maintaining backwards compatibility with sockets for as long as possible, the one challenge being shifts in memory technology. With DDR4 expected to ship at the high end later this year, the DDR3 based FS1b platform should at least have some life in it from a memory compatibility standpoint.
The Platform, Socket & Motherboards
While AM1 is the name of the platform, FS1b is the name of the new socket. AMD sent along a Gigabyte AM1 micro-ATX board (the GA-AM1M-S2H):
The AM1 platform makes for incredibly simple motherboards. There's hardly anything down on the board itself as Kabini is a full blown SoC with integrated memory, PCIe, USB, Gigabit Ethernet and SATA controllers. Gigabyte threw down an iTE Super I/O chip on the motherboard (beneath the heatsink in the lower left) to add serial, LPT, and PS/2 keyboard/mouse ports.
The key points to note here are:
- Single Channel 64-bit DDR3/DDR3L
- Two USB 3.0
- Eight USB 2.0
- PS/2
- Trusted Platform Module Support
- Up to four eDP/DP/HDMI video ouputs
- VGA output
- Four PCIe 2.0 lanes for a discrete GPU/PCIe device
- Two SATA 6 Gbps ports
- One PCIe 2.0 x1 lane allocated to an Ethernet controller
- Three PCIe 2.0 x1 lanes for other controllers (SATA, USB, LAN, WiFi, PCIe 2.0 x1 slots, PCIe to PCI bridges)
As you can see, Kabini provides a good amount of IO. The Gigabyte board includes a single PCIe x16 slot (x4 electrical) and two x1s. You also get two USB 3.0 ports and two USB 2.0 ports on the back header, although the APU itself can support up to 8 USB 2.0 ports. There are also two 6Gbps SATA ports down on the board, the maximum supported by Kabini.
The audio solution has to be cheap to be viable, and we get an ALC887 Realtek codec, which is actually higher end than I expected. Realtek are said to offer a discount when an audio codec and network controller are bought for the same product, so it is no surprise to see a Realtek NIC equipped here.
Because AM1 is a drive to low cost platforms, I do not see many motherboard manufacturers taking advantage and producing works of electrical engineering art. When the most expensive APU you can purchase for a platform is $55, when a motherboard manufacturer starts considering extra controllers or fancy features, the cost/benefit analysis might go out of the window. An extra USB 3.0 controller might add $0.75 to the bill-of-materials, require extra validation and optimization, then add a final $2.50 to the end-user cost (or $4 after retailer markup). After speaking with Patrick from ServeTheHome about the platform, there is certainly scope for adding several NICs to the motherboard and combining its use both as a PC and a router, however none of the motherboards being released with AM1 at launch seem to have more than one.
I was told by AMD that AM1 systems should support memory overclocking above the verified DDR3-1600 speed. This should allow the integrated graphics to stretch its legs a bit more despite the presence of a single channel memory controller should a system integrator consider buying faster memory. Unfortunately at least the Athlon 5350 seems locked to a max multiplier of 20.5x, so there's no hope for easy overclocking of this part at least.
On day one, motherboards should be available from the following vendors:
Once the products are in the market we will attempt to go over them all in one of our motherboard previews, and perhaps a few in full reviews.
With a new socket comes a new heatsink mounting system. Although the rest of AMD's desktop sockets still rely on a latch + lever retention system, Socket-FS1b moves to a push-pin design similar to what Intel uses on its motherboards (albeit with fewer mounting holes, and much simpler mounting/removing due to lower retention force requirements).
At 25W TDP, we might have been hoping for a passive solution, and I am sure that one of the CPU cooler manufacturers will make one, but AMD is playing it safe by using a small active low profile stock cooler. I would hazard a guess that this is an all aluminium construction in order to keep costs down. The reference AM1 HSF is oddly reminiscent of what old "high end" CPUs used to use years ago.
Most AM1 platform motherboards will be similar to what we have here. Some will ship with DisplayPort/DVI, and others might have an extra USB3/SATA controller. I doubt we will see any with audio codecs above the ALC892, or Killer NICs, although there might be an Atheros in the mix.
126 Comments
View All Comments
kyuu - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
Yeah I was going to say something about that. The article text and the graphs are not in agreement.kallogan - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
ground breaking new tech ! Wow !Alexey291 - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link
wowsuch tech
much ground breaking
wow
evonitzer - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
In addition to what you are already planning to test, I would like to see some of the low end A4 or A6 APU's tested. They seem to be a blank spot for your reviews, making it tough to compare the cheap stuff against the previous generation. The A4's come with the same 2 CU GPU, but presumably better cpu performance, and are available pretty close to $50. Sure, they are higher TDP, but whatev.Anyway, interesting review. I'd be seriously tempted if I didn't just put together a cheap PC for my brother already. Maybe grandma can get a surprise upgrade ...
evonitzer - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
Oh hold on, there aren't any A4's or A6's available in Kaveri form, which means no GCN to be had for cheap. That's interesting. I wonder how much difference it makes on the low end. Well either way, the A4-6300 (and below) are still interesting to compare.Glory2God - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
That Atom C2750 looks awesome in the multi threaded benchmarks.rogueninja - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
AMD dualcore, quadcore, octacore, 100 cores. Who give a damn. They're as fast as a turtle.Nintendo Maniac 64 - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
Would have been nice if there were more older CPUs to compare to, like Athlon 64 x2, first gen Phenom X4, and Conroe Core 2 Duo (rather than Wolfdale). It'd be even better if said older CPUs were around 2.0-2.5GHz as wellsaiki4116 - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
Please add comparison with A4-4000(40 USD) and A4-6300,they could cost 10-20usd more than kabini.BushLin - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
Anandtech, where's the power consumption figures? Just quoting the 25w TDP feeds assumptions such as the one I'm replying to.Why is it every time AMD have a CPU worth buying (doesn't happen that often) you guys manage to totally miss the point in the review? It's enough to make an objective person sound like a fanboy.
I'll save you the trouble:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/athlon-5350-am...
Although making the typical reviewer mistake of using a very high wattage PSU on a low power system, we can at least see something close to parity between an Athlon 5350 and a Celeron J1900 (the very same CPUs you reviewed).
Makes quite a different outcome doesn't it?